Subject: [Tweeters] Flammulated Grasshopper
Date: May 31 19:05:58 2010
From: Gary Bletsch - garybletsch at yahoo.com


Dear Tweeters,

There were tons of cool birds to see in Eastern WA over the weekend--in my case, a 4-day weekend.

The "top bird of the trip award" must be shared between FLAMMULATED OWL and GRASSHOPPER SPARROW.

The FLAMMULATED OWL gave me a long concert and a brief look. This was near Bonaparte Lake (Okanogan County) on Friday night and Saturday morning (5-28 and 5-29-2010).

I have a question about the owl's (or owls') vocalizations. It had been a good twelve or fifteen years since I'd heard or seen this species, and I had forgotten how low pitched a sound it is. I can do good Screech, Saw-whet, and Pygmy Owl imitations by whistling, but I could not rearrange the insides of my head and neck in any way to reproduce the sound of the Flammulated Owl, which seem low for the call of a small owl. Besides the timbre and pitch, another odd thing about the vocalizations has me puzzled. The call started out as a single note, given at regular intervals of about three seconds. However, later on I heard either an odd series, or else some sort of antiphonal calling of two or more birds. AT first, this call consisted of two of the normal toots, "tuh-Doo!" Then it got a bit more complicated; the four-note version could be rendered as "tuh-tuh-DOO-duh." Is this one of the normal calls of one of these birds, or is it a pair doing this?

The other super cool bird for me was the GRASSHOPPER SPARROW. I was able to find one of these birds singing at about mile 1.6 up the Soap Lake Road, measured from the southern end of the road (Okanogan County). I was fortunate with this bird. I had to stop driving because of two big puddles that seemed beyond the safe capabilities of my car. I stopped there and walked due west, and heard the bird singing out near where the flat starts to drop off and give a view back to the highway. A few Horned Larks were singing in this area, too.

I think I identified 140 species or so on this trip, covering Chelan, Okanogan, Ferry, Stevens, Pend Oreille, Spokane, Adams, and Grant Counties. I also saw lots and lots of mammals, including a moose that wanted me to hit it with my car, several dozen deer with the same idea, plus quite a few rodents and things.

Here are some more of the avian highlights.

American Bittern: heard along Dodson Road.

Great Egret: small numbers along Dodson Road, also Para Ponds.

Peregrine Falcon: one in Grant County on SR 262 southwest of Potholes State Park.

Wild Turkeys: are they countable in Washtucna? A townswoman says the hen has eggs.

Long-billed Curlew: two near Drumheller Channel.

Black Tern: at least 15 at Beaver Lake (Okanogan County). My powers of description fail me when I try to describe the contrast between the serenity and beauty of this spot, with the lunacy of mass camping at the Beaver Lake Campground just down the road! Next to one enormous RV, a teen-aged boy had a full Ringo Starr-type drum kit set up. It was probably a good thing that he was banging away on them, because it helped drown out the sound of gunfire that kept echoing off the hillsides. All the while, not a soul but me betook themselves to Beaver Lake to see the terns, ducks, and other birds.

Short-eared Owl: one chasing another owl, possibly a Barn Owl, east of Othello. I decided to devote a fairly large fraction of my mental and visual attention to watch the road and the oncoming vehicles, rather than try to identify both of these owls while driving at 65 mph. Thus, I was able to identify only the chaser, not the chasee.

Williamson's Sapsucker: two on the Virginia Lily Nature Trail near Bonaparte Lake.

American Crow: two in Othello (so, they do occur in Adams County after all).

Loggerhead Shrike: one along Highway 97 near Chelan, in Chelan County.

Yellow-breasted Chat: one singing from exposed perches at Wapato Lake (Chelan County). A Grey Catbird came in second in a Meistersinger competition with the chat.

Veery: several heard, one seen. The first one I heard was at the little wetland along the south side SR 20 east of Mazama, milepost 187 exactly. I heard several more at different places: Canyon Creek Trail (Ferry County); Cottonwood Campground (Little Pend Oreille NWR in Stevens County): one seen right near the start of the Iller Creek Nature Trail (Spokane County).

BOBOLINK: one male was perched on the barbed wire just south of Cusick (Pend Oreille County). I saw this bird after deciding not to try for Bobolinks, but it was right there by the roadside. This is the place where huge fields are fenced in with bright white fenceposts for the barbed wire. The bird was on the east side of the highway, near the south end of these huge fields.


ONE MORE QUESTION, as Columbo used to say. In Washtucna, where I saw lots of warblers and other migrants, there are some interesting trees. This species of tree has leaves that are soft and have a bluish cast to them, as do many plants in dry places. The trees are pretty big, about as large as a big willow. They have yellow flowers with four petals. The trees grow along the edge of the bluff near the swimming pool. What sort of trees are they? They smelled very nice, in my opinion.

Yours truly,


Gary Bletsch ? Near Lyman, Washington (Skagit County), USA ? garybletsch at yahoo.com ? ?